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Ivy Bridge is Here – An Overview

By Joseph on April 26, 2012 in Ivy Bridge, Z77 Chipset

This week brought us the release of Ivy Bridge. This particular release is especially strange and rather challenging to cover as a lot of the critical parts are spread out over a 3 month period. Earlier this month we saw the release of the Z77 chipset, which is the primary enthusiast chipset to support Ivy Bridge (like the Z68 Chipset). This week we get the release of the Quad Core CPU versions of Ivy Bridge.

The article below is a great extensive look at the Ivy Bridge release and more specifically, the Core i7-3770K. I just want to touch on a few key points here which will be important to you.

The number one question I am sure: ”Is it worth upgrading to Ivy Bridge from Sandy Bridge?” From a value standpoint my answer is no – UNLESS you want to run PCIe 3.0, or you want to support Thunderbolt technology.

Before I continue, there is a HUGE caveat about Thunderbolt. If you are wanting to use Thunderbolt devices with your new Ivy Bridge System – DO NOT BUY ANYTHING YET. The Z77 chipset will be supporting Thunderbolt with an additional controller, but this will not be released until the end of May. So that means you can’t buy a Z77 motherboard right now, and have it support Thunderbolt. If you don’t care about using Thunderbolt, then don’t worry about it.

The largest benefit for building an Ivy Bridge system is PCIe 3.0 – or it will be eventually. Currently you can play any game at max settings with PCIe 2.0 cards – though I am interested to see the effect PCIe 3.0 will have on current benchmarks. There are currently PCIe 3.0 capable cards on Tom’s Benchmarks, but it is difficult to compare the current offerings. AMD’s 7XXX series cards are PCIe 3.0 capable, and they perform better than the previous generation – but that is to be expected for a new generation video card. nVidia has released the GTX 680 as their only PCIe 3.0 video card, and it outperforms everything except certain cards with higher memory at higher settings – the Extreme benchmarks are dominated by 3 and 4 GB cards, which is to be expected considering the large resolution (keep this in mind when Retina Displays become mainstream).

My take on this is that if you have a Sandy Bridge system right now, don’t upgrade just yet (unless of course you simply enjoy doing that, then feel free to go nuts . There is no value justification in upgrading from a Sandy Bridge / Z68 system to an Ivy Bridge / Z77 system at this time.

Just to wrap up some other notes about this release. This release is only for the Quad Core Ivy Bridge CPUs. The i7-3770k reviewed below is the IB version of the i7-2600k/2700k. The i5-3570k is the IB version of the i5-2500k. So the mid-range build will likely consist of an i5-3570k on a Z77 chipset board. As I am writing this, I haven’t actually seen these chips available in retailers, so I am not sure when that will happen. It’s nice to note that the new versions of these CPUs are actually going to be slightly cheaper than their predecessors – the i7-3770k being $19 cheaper than previous, and the i5-3570k being $13 less. This says to me that retailers are going to likely drop prices on Sandy Bridge not insignificantly (or at least provide sales).

So again, if you currently have a Sandy Bridge system of at least the mid range build, there’s really no reason to upgrade to Ivy Bridge (other than for the heck of it).

I’ll be building a new Ivy Bridge system in the next couple of months – I’m waiting on Thunderbolt for Z77 as well as the rest of nVidia’s Kepler lineup.

For now, do check out this article for more extensive information on the Ivy Bridge release.

The Intel Ivy Bridge (Core i7 3770K) Review
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/the-intel-ivy-bridge-core-i7-3770k-review

The times, they are changing. In fact, the times have already changed, we’re just waiting for the results. I remember the first time Intel brought me into a hotel room to show me their answer to AMD’s Athlon 64 FX—the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. Back then the desktop race was hotly contested. Pushing the absolute limits of what could be done without a concern for power consumption was the name of the game. In the mid-2000s, the notebook started to take over. Just like the famous day when Apple announced that it was no longer a manufacturer of personal computers but a manufacturer of mobile devices, Intel came to a similar realization years prior when these slides were first shown at an IDF in 2005:

image from IntelFreePress

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The Failings of the AMD Bulldozer

By Joseph on January 18, 2012 in AMD Bulldozer

Awhile back I wrote about AMD’s Bulldozer after release. Now, AMD’s newest offering proved to be disappointing in the benchmarks. This is one of the main reasons why AMD’s processors never appear in my recommended lists – though I’m still considering putting together a separate AMD build. I do conceptually like AMD, and have built AMD system’s in the past – I just see higher value with Intel right now. That being said, here is a pretty cool article that gets into the technical nitty gritty of how Bulldozer functions, what their goals were in creating it, and why the 8 core Bulldozer just doesn’t cut it in Windows 7.

They don’t say it here (as this article is from October), but recent rumblings about Windows 8 suggest these problems are fixed – which could push Bulldozer into a competative position.

Analyzing Bulldozer: Why AMD’s chip is so disappointing … – AMD’s Bulldozer is finally here, after years of development — and its performance is significantly worse than anyone expected. The situation is ugly enough that it may explain why so many executives left AMD over the past …

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Consider the CPU Cache

By Joseph on November 10, 2011 in Gaming CPU

For the most part, determining the best CPU option is simply about looking at benchmark tests done by the industry leaders in pc building – Tom’s Hardware, Anandtech, and Overclockers are my reference points of preference. If ultimately we are looking at quantitative performance evaluation on an overall level (system wide in terms of gaming) then the individual details about the processors – such as cpu cache – become less important.

For example, one might look at the i5-2500k and compare it to the i7-2600k. On the surface you can see that both processors have four cores, but the i7 includes hyper-threading which effectively doubles the cores. However, we know from testing that the i7 performs virtually the same as the i5 in gaming (since no game needs more than 4 cores), even though the i7 looks ‘better.’

Even though we can look at processors exclusively via benchmarks – and it is in fact important to do so – it is still good to have an understanding of some of the underlying details about CPUs as this can help us. The CPU Cache is one of those details that often gets glossed over, but sometimes the difference between one CPU or another ends up being the cache – and understanding that can help explain why one has ‘better’ performance than the other.

Cache is designed to improve frequent memory access speed. You may notice a pattern in data access and memory design of systems. If you recall the SSD caching article – where the ssd is used to cache for the RAM reference, the cpu cache is used to cache data from RAM. Ultimately, the closer (physically) that a component is to the CPU, the faster the CPU is capable of accessing that data. The CPU cache acts like RAM which is physically sitting on the processor itself – so data access rates for the processor are much higher than from RAM, which is much higher than a hard drive. The downside of course is that cache sizes can’t be RAM sized (similar to how RAM can’t be hard drive sized).

There is also a trade-off between speed and size of the cache. Some executions benefit from greater speed, and some benefit from greater cache size. This is why most modern CPUs contain three levels of cache. Each cache is for specific actions – the L3 cache is one which often gets attention, and one where increased size means increased performance. The cores don’t need the L3 to be fast as the CPU already has the small L1 and L2 caches.

Intel does this a bit different now, with what they call Smart Cache. Essentially, their Smart Cache is one block of CPU Cache which the CPU cores can intelligently utilize different sizes of depending on needs. Check out the video.

Here is one way we can use this knowledge: Let’s consider the new i7-2700k. This is just a slightly updated version of Intel’s i7-2600k – which we know to be a 4 core processor with hyper-threading. The only difference between the i7-2600k and the i7-2700k is 100mhz in the base processor speed. That to me is no justification for the extra price (about $50 more). If instead (or in addition), Intel had bumped the cache from 8mb to 12mb – that would be something to take note of (the i7-2700k has 8mb cache, as does the i7-2600k).

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The New AMD Bulldozer CPU – Where does it Stand?

By Joseph on October 17, 2011 in AMD Bulldozer, Gaming CPU

This isn’t necessarily an analysis of AMD platforms so much as it is a look at the new AMD Bulldozer CPU offerings and seeing how they stands up vs the Intel Sandy Bridge offerings. This is with respect to my general approach of ‘value’ building – which tends to land within the mid-range build.

One of the questions most people ask who are getting into computer building is: Do I go AMD or Intel? I can understand a certain appeal for either. AMD makes some very good quality processors at the lower prices ranges, and there is a fair argument for going AMD when building a budget system. For me, it simply comes down to performance and value. How much am I spending now and how long will this system likely last? Right now Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPU systems score very high in the charts and on top of that, the i5-2500k can be overclocked an impressive amount (increasing the long-term value of the system).

AMD’s philosophy is geared towards making multi-core CPUs. Of their offerings, they have 4 core, 6 core, and 8 core CPUs – the Bulldozer FX-8150 is AMD’s 8 core offering which looks to stand against Intel’s impressive 4 core i5-2500k. Intel does not have an 8 core processor – instead they have the i7-2600k, which is a 4 core processor that uses hyper-threading to virtually duplicate the 4 cores creating what is effectively 8.

Here’s the deal though: 8 cores are technically better than 4 cores with hyper-threading used to create an effective 8. The problem that is being experienced right now is that the way Windows is constructed, and the way most games are made, they won’t take advantage of more than 4 cores. This is a rather simplistic explanation – the way AMD constructed Bulldozer is rather complex on the technical level, but in the end it’s all about real world performance.

The short of it is that when put the FX-8150 up against the i5-2500k Sandy Bridge Intel CPU, the Bulldozer offering just doesn’t cut the cake. One would need a game to take advantage of 8 cores (or conceivably at least more than 4 cores) in order to see a benefit over the i5. Considering the i5 is cheaper and performs better, that still keeps us with the Intel based I5-2500k system. The AMD systems generally are more well suited to a budget build approach. I have yet to write up a budget suggestion, but I suspect that I will be looking into AMD’s Phenom II X4 955 CPU, as it performs well next to Intel’s i3-2100 with the right setup.

If you want to read up on the more detailed technical analysis of AMD Bulldozer cpu look here, and for testing on the Bulldozer FX-8150 look here.

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Ivy Bridge is Here – An Overview

The Failings of the AMD Bulldozer

Consider the CPU Cache

The New AMD Bulldozer CPU – Where does it Stand?

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